DevinHarnois.com

Sometimes I start seeing a pattern in blog posts, articles, things people say to me, and so on. A theme, a subject that keeps coming up, and eventually I realize the universe is sending me a message.

Recently, the message has been that I should trust myself, along with other closely related messages like “follow your heart” and “don’t stop yourself”. So I’m listening — or trying to, anyway. I need to write the stories that set my imagination on fire, and not worry about repeating myself or whether they fit into a particular market or not. The story will never be perfect, but I can trust that if it excites me, someone, somewhere will also like it. Maybe an editor or agent, if I’m lucky. But if I don’t trust myself, if I don’t follow the stories that burn in me, how can I expect someone else to love my work?

I get this question all the time from family, friends, coworkers and acquaintances. My response is: “Which book?” Often I can’t remember what book I mentioned the last time I talked to them. Some people are talking about the due-to-be-published Darkness at Dawn. Some remember one of my NaNo novels, some remember Marked, or Crossbreed. A few even remember *shudder* the terrible fantasy I wrote in my early teens. My aunt brought that one up this weekend. She asked me if I was going to try to get that published and I said no. Then she tried to convince me that it might be worth looking at again and trying to fix. Um, no. Really. It’s bad. She kept trying to say that maybe if I changed some things, spent some time editing it, it might end up better than I thought. No. Really, NO. It’s not worth wasting my time on. I have other, much better novels that might actually be worth publishing.

People kind of boggle at me when I have to start counting on my fingers to remember how many novels I’ve written. I think a lot of people think you write one book, then you ride that horse all the way to publication before you do anything else. How depressing would that be? Doing nothing but sitting and waiting as you shop the book around to agents (and/or editors) … no thanks. The best distraction is moving on to the next thing.

Maybe next time someone asks, I’ll list off each book and what stage it’s in. (and watch their eyes glaze over)